5 Stars From Last Night’s #RAW

Raw was live from New Orleans last night, and just like pretty much every other Raw over the last month, it was a go-home show before a pay per view. Money in the Bank is this Sunday, so most of the matches and storylines centered around the matches you’re going to see Sunday. Dean Ambrose went on a tour of New Orleans, R-Truth stole the show and the WWE champion got pinned by a member of his security team. Let’s get to the five stars from last night’s Raw!’

1. Kevin Owens

I guess I can just copy and paste what I’ve been saying for the past month or so – Kevin Owens is the best character in the WWE. The points he makes are true but he’s just enough of an asshole for you to still hate him. He’s got this cocky confidence mixed with an ‘I don’t give a shit about any of you’ vibe that is just so easy to play off of. Cena opens Raw with an impassioned promo about how he’s still the standard bearer and if you want to make it in this company you have to go through him. Owens saunters out to the ring and just continually calls Cena delusional, offers an open challenge for his NXT title, denies Cena the chance to enter it, then forces Cena to watch on from commentary as he almost power bombs Neville through the ring. This is the third week in a row Owens has had both the best promo and the best match on the show, and I’m genuinely intrigued to see how they handle his match this Sunday against Cena. I don’t know if Owens wins clean again, but they haven’t had a character as good as Owens in a long time, so I hope they tread carefully. Neville also deserves a supplementary best here as well, as he and Owens opened the show with a great match and no one was really able to follow it all night. He should be fun as hell to watch in the MITB match this Sunday.

2. R-Truth

If you didn’t laugh when R-Truth came out and talked about how he’s going to win the MITB match Sunday only to be told he is not actually in the match, then I don’t know what to tell you. That’s as funny as WWE is going to get, and the crowd and everyone in the ring ate it up. The best part is that I can actually believe that R-Truth the character/actual human being never really knows when or who he’s wrestling. He just kind of wanders out when he hears his entrance music and either loudly yells ‘what’s up’ or raps in gibberish until he reaches the ring. I want R-Truth to come out ahead of the main event and tell the crowd why he thinks he’s going to win the WWE title this Sunday and then wrestle Hornswoggle because that’s who he thinks is the champion. Give me more R-Truth is basically what I’m saying.

3. Rowan & Harper 2.0

Usually when the WWE tries to restart someone or something, it’s a bad sign. But if the plan is to bring back Rowan and Harper and correctly push them to the top of the tag team division like they should’ve done from the beginning then I’m all for it. Rowan and Harper dominated the NXT tag team division before the call up, and should’ve done the same thing once they hit the main roster. Unlike the Ascension, Rowan and Harper’s characters translate to the main roster because of their look. They’re not wearing weird leather shoulder pads or face paint, they are two enormous guys with huge beards who will beat and scare the shit out of you simultaneously. For whatever reason, the WWE had the Uso’s continually beat them until they finally broke them up completely, and while Harper always had great matches, it was clear WWE didn’t have anything for either Rowan or Harper as singles stars. Now that they’re back together, giving them a tag team finisher is a step in the right direction, no matter how many ‘legends’ it pisses off. Get Wyatt back as their leader and have them start to pick apart the roster like they should’ve been doing since the beginning. Just keep John Cena at least 1,000 feet away from them at all times.

4. New Day

As good as Kevin Owens has been over the last month or so, New Day has almost been his equal. Every segment they’re in has been wildly entertaining, and they all look great in the ring. Big E had about as good a match as you’re going to get with Titus O’Neil, but Kofi Kingston had a really good match with Roman Reigns. Xavier Woods was great on the outside too, yelling at the announce team to tell viewers at home what hash tags to start using and then getting walloped by a flying Roman Reigns later in the night. I can’t see Kofi winning MITB this Sunday, but New Day should retain against the PTP. With Tyson Kidd hurt, there’s really no other tag team on New Day’s level other than Rowan & Harper, but they need to be built back up again. As long as they continue to be fun to watch, I hope New Day stays on my TV for a long time.

5. Roman Reigns

This was one of the best Raw matches Reigns has had since becoming a singles star, and he’s starting to find his groove again in the ring. I think he’s the favorite to win MITB this Sunday, and while there are no such things as ‘must win’ matches in scripted wrestling, Reigns does need a big win. It would also be poetic justice to get the same briefcase that robbed him of his WrestleMania moment just over two months ago. Reigns and Ambrose have been a little too chummy lately, and it has to eat away at Reigns that Ambrose is getting all these opportunities while he’s still trying to earn his way back to the top. I don’t know if a heel turn is the right move at this time, especially with an impending Brock Lesnar return, but things are looking up again for the handsome prince.